George Conway, writing in The Atlantic after President-elect Donald Trump’s sweeping, landslide victory on Wednesday morning:

By 2020, after the chaos, the derangement, and the incompetence, we knew a lot better. And most other Americans did too, voting him out of office that fall. And when his criminal attempt to steal the election culminated in the violence of January 6, their judgment was vindicated.

So there was no excuse this year. We knew all we needed to know, even without the mendacious raging about Ohioans eating pets, the fantasizing about shooting journalists and arresting political opponents as “enemies of the people,” even apart from the evidence presented in courts and the convictions in one that demonstrated his abject criminality.

We knew, and have known, for years. Every American knew, or should have known. The man elected president last night is a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution and laws he will swear to uphold, and on top of all that, he exhibits emotional and cognitive deficiencies that seem to be intensifying, and that will only make his turpitude worse. He represents everything we should aspire not to be, and everything we should teach our children not to emulate. The only hope is that he’s utterly incompetent, and even that is a double-edged sword, because his incompetence often can do as much as harm as his malevolence. His government will be filled with corrupt grifters, spiteful maniacs, and morally bankrupt sycophants, who will follow in his example and carry his directives out, because that’s who they are and want to be.

There were seven swing states in this election: three “blue wall” states, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; and four “Sun Belt” southern states, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. Vice President Kamala Harris’ best and easiest path to victory was to win the blue wall, a set of states that almost reliably vote Democratic and historically vote together. Trump’s 2016 victory was accomplished by cracking the blue wall, turning all three states red in a decisive victory. President Biden turned them blue again in 2020, but Trump turned them red again. It isn’t necessary to win the Sun Belt to reach 270 electoral votes — just the blue wall is enough since all three states vote together.

This tells us a lot about the blue wall: it is a blue mirage. The blue wall no longer exists. The last eight years of American politics have been defined by a stipulation that 2016 was an anomaly — an upset — and that 2020 was a return to form. Rather, the opposite is true: 2020 was the anomaly, and 2016 and 2024 are proof of the post-2012 realignment in our nation’s politics. Democrats won 2020 not because Biden was a good candidate or because Trump won a fluke victory in 2016 but because Americans were sick of being stuck at home. Americans begrudged Trump not because they thought he was a bad president or a bad person, but because they just wanted someone to get them out of their homes. Biden did that, but he never got credit for it because, in Americans’ minds, that was his job. The real test of Biden’s presidency — and what ultimately led to his permanent downfall — was the Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021, which Biden’s approval ratings never recovered after.

What I’ve learned is that the United States is ultimately a far-right nation. Like it or not, the Democrats ran a flawless campaign — as good as they could in 110 days. They reached as many voters as they could, advertised pro-worker policies to blue-collar Michiganders and Pennsylvanians, emphasized freedom and abortion rights for white-collar voters, and did all of this while combating the lies and decisiveness of Trump. But Trump is not a tough opponent — two for three — because he is a good candidate, but because America is filled with bad people. Conway’s headline is perfect: “America Did This to Itself.” Harris’ closing message was, “We’re not going back,” but America wants to go back. It likes the divisiveness, racism, misogyny, and hatred of a Trump presidency and yearns for its return. America did do this to itself, and it’s proud of itself right now. The proof is in the pudding: Trump didn’t just win the Electoral College — he won the popular vote.

Zoom in for a second: How did Trump win the popular vote? Trump, yes, got more votes this year than he ever did, but that number is pretty steady across 2016, 2020, and 2024. In 2016, Trump played Electoral College games, and in 2020, he obviously lost. But what changed between 2020 and 2024? Harris got 15 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020. Again, Trump got roughly the same number — it was Harris who lost 15 million votes. This becomes apparent in liberal strongholds like Philadelphia, where the last 40 percent of votes are almost always mail-in Democratic ballots. As the night progressed, John King, CNN’s political analyst, pointed to a chart that showed each candidate’s vote percentage as more ballots were counted. Before 10 p.m., Harris had a lead, but that fell exponentially as Trump took the lead at midnight. After that, the count remained even — the percentages didn’t change as the count inched closer to completion. Harris was at 47 percent, Trump at 51 percent. Those mail-in ballots from the Philadelphia suburbs — who aren’t from blue-collar, high school-educated voters, mind you, but white-collar college degree-touting city slickers — were split 47-to-51 in Trump’s favor in educated, suburban Philadelphia.

Harris obviously won Philadelphia by 80 percent in Philadelphia County and around 60 percent in the suburbs, but that result is more conservative than Biden’s 2020 victory. I already explained this: 15 million Democrats nationwide stayed home, many of whom were in Philadelphia. The same story goes for Detroit: Trump wins the Detroit suburbs by wide margins since they’re chock-full of automotive workers, but Biden cut into his margins just enough to win the state while remaining intact with Arab and young voters to the north and west. Harris, by contrast, lost the Arab vote entirely in Dearborn, Michigan, and lost the Detroit suburbs by way more than she should have. Muslims aren’t suddenly voting for Trump, and neither are auto workers — the Democrats in these areas stayed home. Why?

The Arab explanation is simple: the war in Gaza. I have no further commentary. But statistics have shown that Democrats do better in suburban Detroit when turnout is higher. In 2016, Black voters stayed home because Trump portrayed Hillary Clinton as a racist who doesn’t care about Black people. In 2020, Biden won those voters back because of the pandemic. In 2024, a confluence of circumstances led to diminished Democratic turnout: Harris’ gender, heritage, and job as Biden’s vice president. (a) Biden is unpopular, and thus, his entire party — and especially his vice president — is unpopular; (b) men don’t vote for women, regardless of their ethnicity or education level; and (c) Americans do not believe an Asian person is an American. I’m South Asian-American, just like Harris, so I think I can explain this easily: Bigots don’t believe nonwhite or nonblack people are American. Indians come to America to run gas stations, Middle Eastern people come to drive taxicabs, and Chinese people come to occupy the schools with rote memorizers. This is the bigotry that circles through 52 percent of the American, non-Asian population.

A few months ago, we all scoffed at Trump’s “she’s not Black, she’s Indian” attack line as pure, Trump-like racism — and it is Trump-like racism, don’t get me wrong. But that attack line, if I had to guess, did wonders for his campaign. These racist brutes in eastern Michigan and western Pennsylvania don’t believe Asian people have the right to be in America — that we are an inferior race undeserving of the presidency. This is not white-Black racism; this interesting form of racism is practiced by Latinos, white people, Black people, and anyone else who isn’t a first- or second-generation immigrant. There is a word for this: nativism, that people who don’t have a direct lineage to the 1700s United States inherently aren’t American. Harris underperformed Clinton not because of her gender but because she is a biracial Asian American. The people who would’ve voted for Harris had she not been Asian didn’t vote for Trump — because, again, he got roughly the same amount of votes as last time — just sat this one out or voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party’s candidate. Trump knew what he was doing when he said Harris wasn’t Black.

My feelings on this topic as an Asian American are bitter. I have completely lost faith in my country, the ability of people like me to ever ascend to the highest position in American politics, and the goodwill of my people. America is not a country filled with a majority of good people — it is a nation of bad-faith, racist, xenophobic, nativist morons. I will continue to think this until an Asian American wins the presidency, an event that I fully believe will not occur in my lifetime.

This voter turnout issue is exactly why the polls predicted this race to be a tossup: If everyone in America had to cast a ballot, Harris would’ve won because the nativists who voted for Biden and Clinton would’ve held their nose and voted for her anyway. They’re not Trump voters — they’re Democrats who (a) hate old people and (b) hate Asian people. Maybe they hate old people more than they hate Asian people, which would explain the six-point lead Trump had in the polls before Biden dropped out, but they hate both. These are the “double haters” that the Harris campaign tried to reach out to and who leaned toward her but eventually stayed home. If this contingent voted, Harris would be up there as president-elect — but, alas, we’re here. The United States got what it wanted: racism, nativism, sexism, misogyny, and xenophobia. Welcome to the resistance for the next four years, Democrats.